Poison
by BuBuWinter
Summary: Astra Snaketongue has suffered much in her short life. What she thinks is a gesture of kindness can ultimately be the thing to wreck her innocence and destroy her heart. She learns that love is nothing but misery, gullibility, and foolishness rolled up into a single misguided feeling. One-shot.


**AN: Not my best work, short and overall just...bland, but I really wanted to do something with Astra. I can't work on any long-term stories right now, so this will have to do. Anywho do enjoy! Credits to Majestic War for Talon!  
**

**Poison**

She was sick again. Blood covered napkins were littered around her frail frame, her face was sunken in, and her once silky red hair was knotted and drenched in sweat, the fever she had practically devouring her body. She kept shuddering and shaking though, like she was cold, something young Astra was quite confused about. The five-year-old curled up beside her mother, feeling her burning skin with one tiny hand and staring intently at her face. She wasn't used to seeing her so weak. She had always thought her mother was the most powerful being alive, that she was immortal. Immortals didn't get sick, not like this.

"Promise you won't leave?" Astra once asked her late in the dying mother's days. Her mom would smile the sweetest yet weakest of smiles, a frail hand running a hand through her daughters beautiful hair before resting it on her cheek.

"I promise, my beautiful gift," Astra smiled at this, one that would quickly fade when her mother went into a coughing fit, blood splaying across her hand and pain glazing over her eyes. Astra, amber eyes as wide as an owls, reached over and grabbed another napkin off the end table, wiping the hot substance off her mother's mouth and hands. She would lay with her the rest of the night, pretending her mother would continuously say 'goodnight my beautiful gift' in her ears to lure her to sleep. _I am your gift mommy, the best present you'll ever have, I promise, _she thought to herself, eyes closed as she drifted off into sleep.

The next day she woke to her mother sleeping, unnervingly still. Astra, thinking she was simply sleeping in to get her strength up, waited. And waited. And waited. The young girl grew paranoid when five hours passed and her mother had yet to stir. She stood from the bed and ran down stairs, nearly tripping on the long tresses of her skirt. Her father was sitting at the couch, chugging down a silky brown substance and groaning angrily when it was gone, throwing the empty capsule aside. When he noticed his daughter, he raised an eyebrow, clearly agitated.

"Is mama...dead?" she asked, her voice cracking at the last word and tears spilling from her eyes. Her father knew she probably was but remained indifferent. He faked a gentle smile that most father's would honestly give their daughter and shook his head.

"Of course not, dear! She's just really tired of being sick all the time, ya know? Jus' sit with her. She'll wake up eventually." So she did. She went back upstairs and waited it out. She would spend three hours laying in bed with her, stroking the long, once-elegant hair. She would pull up a chair and read one of her many children's books as if she were putting her mother to bed. She would try to dance in front of her mother to show her what she could do. Sometimes she would just sit there, staring, waiting, hoping that by the next morning she would wake up. The stench of sickness became much worse within the days following her death, but despite the obvious signs Astra wouldn't believe her mother was dead. She was much too strong. Her father had said she was just sleeping, getting over her sickness, and her mother had promised she would never leave her. Ever. She wouldn't leave her beautiful gift.

_Mommy, look what I can do!_

_Mommy, I know your tired. Keep sleeping. I'll be here when you wake up. _

_Mommy, your so cold. Is your fever gone?_

_Mommy, your so pretty. Always will be._

_Mommy, I'm going to be just like you, you'll see. You'll be so proud of me. _

_Mommy, I love you. Goodnight._

She would continue the same routine for five years. Lay at her mother's side, read to her, dance for her, sit with her. Her body was decaying by then, the skin peeling and drying and flies coming to inhabit her body. Finally, the painful, unimaginable truth dawned on her, and on her tenth birthday, she curled up in her mother's dead arms and cried into the lifeless corpse, begging her to come back, begging her to keep her promise. She begged and begged and begged her to come back to her beautiful gift, but Astra knew she never would.

The following morning she confronted her father again. The stench of alcohol was just as overpowering as the stench of the dead. She yelled at him, screeched at him, demanding to know why he lied to her the way he did. He yelled back, throwing an empty bottle at her and telling her it was so he could go out drinking, saying that his wife - her mother - was a hopeless and sick case from the start. She ran away then, both in a blinded grief and in anger. She hated her father, but she was the fool who listened to him.

She would never see him again.

* * *

Three years later she would be roaming the streets as a pickpocket, banishing her thoughts of her mother to the back of her mind and instead focusing on surviving in a cold world of thieves and high-class citizens. She would meet a young boy of the same likeness and age as she was, Talon. He and his family took her in, treating her as if she truly were a member of their family. Talon and Astra grew inseparable, going out and playing together. He made her happy, happier than she had been since her mother had grown sick and passed on.

Thirteen year old Astra curled up beside Talon, watching the flickering firelight with wide amber eyes. His arm wrapped around her shoulders, and they sat together like that in silence.

"I hate him." The words that escaped Talons lips were a familiar song in Astra's ears. She looked at him in mock curiosity, head tilting to the side. His arm tightened around her shoulders, and she pulled herself closer to him. His dark eyes were blazing in hat familiar furious light.  
"My stepfather..."

Astra would listen to his complaints every day, listen to his tangents before soothing him by running a hand through his hair and telling him he still had her, that she was his beautiful gift and he was hers. She would speak to him like that whenever he grew upset or angry because she loved him, just as her mother had felt for her. She would wrap her thin arms around his waist and bury her face in his chest, telling him she would always be there for him and would always love him. Neither of them knew how much the words meant to each other, but they knew they meant something.

_You're my gift Talon, and I can be yours too._

_I love you, even if _he _doesn't._

_I'll protect you. I don't know how, but I will._

_My precious, beautiful gift. _

One day, however, a strange man would approach her, telling her about a life she could be living, a happier life, a better life. Thinking only of her want to protect her dearest friend Talon, she accepted graciously and enthusiastically. What happened next was far behind her comprehension. She was strapped to a metal bench and was put into a deep coma-like sleep. He operated her, cut off her legs and replaced them with black iron mechanical ones. He attached a ring of iron around her eye to enhance her senses and melded the same substance into her right arm's muscles to imbue her with the strength of twenty men. When she was awoken, her memory had been erased.

She would never see Talon the same way again.

* * *

For two years she would wander the streets as a cybernetic human, blindly doing the will of the scientist who destroyed her innocence. She would thieve from the most high-class civilians, rob the jewelry markets, injure those who got in her way and kill any who persisted. By her fifteenth birthday, she would have murdered four people and permanently damaged over a dozen more by means of amputations and blinding.

Once she would see Talon. He would recognize her, but she wouldn't know him, her mind filled with misguided memories and dark thoughts. A sharp pain had coursed through her at the sight of him though, the locked memories threatening to come out and drive her mad, but without her will to know him, they remained secret. She would turn away from him and run.

By her fifth victim and her seventieth theft, she would learn of the Conjuration master Cyrus Drake. He was to be visiting Marleybone, and the scientist would find this to be the perfect opportunity to prove that science was superior to magic. He ordered her to kill the master Conjurer by any means necessary. She would accept her task and go out in search for the man, planning to kill him with her own two hands.

One things that neither of them had counted on, however, was that Cyrus had been a long-time friend to the Snaketongue family. He recognized Astra despite her many modifications, and in the midst of a bloody and intense battle he called out her mother's name. This was what triggered the return of her locked memories, and she collapsed mid-battle, screaming and writhing on the ground as memories of her mother's voice and loving face bombarded her mind. Cyrus would comofrt her, hold her in his arms in a way not unlike Talon had in her younger years and later help her to regain her remaining memories. He would take her to the bar her father often drank at, he would take her to Marleybone's center at night to see the bonfires light, he would take her to her mother's grave. All these things triggered parts of Astra's memory, and soon she and Cyrus would go to the scientist who had destroyed her. They would argue, and had Astra's head had been clear at the time she would have killed him. She didn't though, instead excusing herself from the care and leaving with Cyrus at her side. Behind her, she would hear the words:

"Did you know in Avalonian, gift means poison?

She would no longer think of a precious gift as something to cherish as it meant precious poison.

_She was her mother's precious poison._

**Fun Fact: In German, gift really does mean poison.**


End file.
